Episode-574- Listener Feedback 12-20-10

So today is Monday, time for another round of your email feedback, if you want to submit content for a show like this send your link and commentary to jack at thesurvivalpodcast.com with the subject, “question for jack” and I will try to get your content on the air.

Join me today as we discuss…

TSP Wins Podcast of the Year Award

An awesome 11 year old speaks out on GMOs and more

Gardening really is good for your mental health and health in general

10 foods that store longer then you live

What’s Up With Iranian ballistic missiles in Venezuela

Replacing the carbon footprint with a dependency footprint

The Iranian Missiles In Venezuela worth a worry or not

What risks are there if the dollar stops being the world’s reserve currency

Assclown of the Week says “congress should serve the banks”! SERIOUSLY

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27 Responses to Episode-574- Listener Feedback 12-20-10

The 11 year old Birke Baehr’s presentation was very smooth and polished no doubt, but I’m a bit suspect of it. I don’t mean the content, but this strikes me as a kid channeling his parents training a lot more than a 11 year old’s independent work. I could be wrong, and I really don’t know. Perhaps home schooling produces very mature 11 year-olds (which would be great) who just happen to take to a subject.

This isn’t about disagreeing with the core message, but this could just as easily been a presentation about the global warming alarmism, or how eating meat is “murder” or whatever other message an activist parent might use their kid to promote.

I don’t want to unfairly knock this kid (or his parents), but this strikes me as being a bit too perfect, and more projecting of a parent, than the sincere views of this youngster. I’d rather find that my skepticism is off-base.

KAM, I’ve met home-schooled kids on more than one occasion (but I have not met Birke). My experience with “them” – is that they do generally take on their parents values (then again, any parent that shows interest in, and raises their kids, will have their values passed onto them). Its Biblical in fact: Proverbs 22:6 – Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.

However, I’m aware of a couple of additional facts about home-schooled kids:
1) They are less afraid of the world.
2) They’re more independent (and less likely to parrot crap that is taught in government school)
3) They’re more likely to be objective, because they’re questioning everything, and their teacher takes the time to answer those questions, rather than telling them to ‘give one of the other 30 students a turn’.
4) They’re more mature.
5) They’re more observant.

“strikes me as being a bit too perfect” –
Look the guy up. He’s on youtube. You can see his audition, which shows that he prepared for this speech. Think of it this way: You’re given an opportunity to speak in front of some folks. Do you think you wouldn’t prepare? Do you think that you wouldn’t work hard, to do a good job, and use your time wisely? His speech was perfect, because he worked hard on it.

Perhaps “Independence Ratio”
Simply, someone who produced a total “value” in terms of utility equal to what utility they consume would have a ratio of 1.0.

I’m not sure how practical it would be to determine what one’s level of independence is across the board. Someone might produce 5 times the food they consume, but produce zero energy (while consuming). That begs the question–what is one person’s energy allotment? It would vary greatly depending on many other choices in their life. Food–not so much–it is the food required to keep you alive and well.

Difficulties aside, I am not sure how this could be done to avoid the propaganda feel of “carbon footprint.” However, if this could be done in a way to motivate people (which I am sure is the goal), I’d be all for it.

@JeanetteW, not much to see, http://www.podcastawards.com/ The video of the event should be in the archives of GeekNews on Ustream but I can’t find it. I can find the announcement of the finalists but not the ceremony.

Spencer Bachus is not a Senator. He is the U.S. Representative for Alabama’s 6th congressional district. That doesn’t make his comment any less truthful or terrifying.

There is no such thing as a “BRIC alliance”. The term BRIC was coined by Jim O’Neill in a 2001 paper entitled “The World Needs Better Economic BRICs”. In fact a few of those countries don’t get along with each other and may have conflicting agendas.

With regards to whole discussion about carbon, please clarify something for me; Are you skeptical about climate change in general, or are whether or not carbon dioxide is the cause?

Keep up the good work and congratulations on the award. It is well deserve.

I’m not sure a Berkey system can remove Hexavalent chromium from water – PLEASE let me know if I’m wrong. Trivalent chromium is naturally occurring and it falls easily as a sediment that can be filter out. Hexavalen chromium, or Cr(VI), is fully soluble in water and it creates stable ionic bonds.
I’ve visited companies which use this stuff for electroplating and they were all required to have water treatment facilities with large Ion exchange filtering systems. Its like a Reverse Osmosis system but with a more specialized resin in the tank.

@Genaro, I stand corrected on caling the assclown a senator, all I can say is good, it is easier to fire a House Rep than a senator.

The BRIC does exist, I know the genesis of the term but the nations are in discussions together about the use of their currencies and what they will do if the dollar fails. Perhaps calling it an alliance goes to far?

On climate change of course the climate changes it has been MUCH warmer and MUCH colder in the past. In the future we will deal with many changes, thinking we can prevent climate change is assinine. Of course I don’t believe CO2 causes significant warming, too much evidence to the contrary. Like warming on Mars nearly matching that of earth.

Cap and Trade is a virtual license for big companies to pollute. It is a new black market for a new fiat currency to be traded and multiplied with derivatives. It will do nothing about pollution and the big banks and the BIG OIL companies are absolutely for it, seriously.

Google “Maruice Strong” who is the real force behind global warming and global carbon taxes if you want the truth. Get this Maruice is the father of the Green Movement launched in 1978, he was a very powerful member of the UN. His initial push was taxation to stop GLOBAL COOLING, when the planet warmed they just shifted gears! Global Warming became the new issue, now it is “climate change” and when that fails they now use the term “global disruption”. The envirodolts still drink the kool-aid.

Al Gore is nothing in this real movement, just a useful idiot that made a movie. Strong is the real force behind it.

NOW GET THIS – Strong is a billionaire, he made his billions and continues to make billions in what? OIL! He is currently in China helping the Chinese learn to trade carbon credits in the new global scam we are told will save the polar bears.

I can’t see how anyone who does REAL RESEARCH (which is more than reading The Huffington Post and looking at some graphs) can believe even one percent of the bullshit about carbon being the real problem.

@Jack…I bought The Renewable Energy Handbook on your recommendation. For the most part it was/is very good. Mr. Kemp and I will have to disagree on the CO2 causing global warming thing. Also, CF lights cause head aches so I will have to wait for LED’s to advance before changing my lights out. For right now I continue to stockpile “rough service” light bulbs. Anyway, thanks for the recommendation on the book.

When you were talking about inflammation and depression it made sense to me as St.Johnswort tea is good for depression,and ST.Johnswort oil is good for muscle inflammation. Perhaps the tea act a an anti-inflammatory and that is how the depression is lifted.

The deadline to use your 2010 funds that you contributed to your flex spend account is March 31, 2011.
My question is can you use your 2010 funds from 1/1/11 to 3/31/11 to buy OTC items. I would think you should be able to spend your 2010 funds under the 2010 rules.

There may be areas of, or countries in, Africa and South America that have a DR of almost 1:1, which is complete independence. Areas in the US, like NYC may have a DR of 100:1, since they are dependant upon others for everything they consume.

You could also subset Dependency Ratios into energy, food, shelter, medical, etc. subgroups.

I agree with Steven on “Dependency Quotient,” I thought this as well while listening to the show. It would have that negative connotation while not sounding like the idiotic “carbon footprint”. I do like the thought of having a positive term as well and “Independence Ratio” sounds pretty good for that. I like the thought of striving to increase a good number, hey it’s the REAL American way, over decreasing a bad number. Sure, it’s semantics and I would like to point at some lib drone spewing out nonsense and pointing out how bad his “Dependency Quotient” is, particularly how it relates to his real carbon footprint.

I heard a great guest on Coast to Coast years ago, I wanna say this was back in the ’03 to ’05 range, who was talking about CO2 in the atmosphere. He was a scientist and called his study something like ArcheoPaleoGeoClimatology, thats a big word he made up to describe what he does. In essence he was studying ice cores from thousands of years ago as well as geological cores to study climate and atmospheric data. His conclusion was that rising CO2 does not create warming but warming causes CO2 rising. One of the more striking things he talked about was the definition of ice age, which according to him is the presence of glaciers and polar caps. By his definition we are still in but coming out of the last ice age. The majority of Earths CO2 is trapped in glacial and polar ice, releasing as the ice melts. I have heard other scientists, I cannot remember where but not just on the show, that believe that this increase is not harmful as the available CO2 for plants would proportionally raise the available O2 for animals. Hmmm, sounds like the Earth may have been created to balance itself for the habitation of life. At least it seems it is resilient to changes occurring to it.

After hearing yesterday’s podcast, I started thinking about a name to replace Carbon Footprint and serve a similar goal of knowing how many resources you individually consume without the political BS associated with it.

I came up with a name, Resource Dependency Index, and started thinking about how to put together such a system. I am a fan of the ANDI (Aggregate Nutritional Density Index) scale that Whole Foods uses in how it’s scale goes from the most nutritionally poor food is rated a 1 (HCFS soda) and the most nutritionally dense food is rated 1000 (kale). I really like a 1-100 scale in that it’s easy to see what is good and bad without having to know a lot of specific information. Unfortunately, I don’t think we could use that as a base because resource dependency has more than one factor and their scale builds up to a high number as a good thing for high nutrition where we want our high number to be a bad thing as it shows someone using way more resources than the average person.

So what I did is create four categories to factor into the RDI: Food, Transporation, Housing, and Miscellaneous. Each category has a possible score between 1-20 with 1 using almost no resources and 20 using way more resources than everyone else.

Thanks for the reply.
We agree on cap and trade. Even if CO2 is linked to global warming, allowing companies to still produce it by handing them a piece of paper they can trade and even profit from is stupid. I’m with you on this one – Cap and Trade is a scam. Another important point in which I’m in complete agreement with you is that CO2 is used a red herring to distract the public from all the other incredibly nasty stuff we put in our air and water.
I rather leave Strong, Gore, the Koch brothers and the whole Oil and Gas Lobby out of this. As you have pointed out in your show, we have to look at who is behind the sales pitch and what do they stand to gain. Since there are a number of powerful interests that benefit from either side of the issue, I’m trying to stand firmly on facts. I do check my sources carefully.
I have heard the argument about Mars before, but I have to tell you I don’t think it holds any water. If you are interested I’ll post why.
The main question here is if the climate shift we see now is due to natural causes or human activity. While I’m not yet sure controlling our CO2 output will make any difference, the data I’ve research leads me to believe humans are most likely responsible for what’s going on right now. The empirical data (direct temperature measurements) correlates with our expansion of industrial capacity, population explosion and everything that come with it. I’m talking long-term trends here. I think we can agree that, In general, our use of land and resources has not been focus on long term sustainability. How this plays out is anyone’s guess at this point. For better or worse, we have evolved enjoying remarkable weather stability for the past few thousands of years so if/when change happen, we are in for a very rough time.

I have some thoughts on the Dependency index. I’ll post those on the forum latter.

@Genaro the problem with your belief is it really amounts to nothing but faith. The climate has changed far more drastically in the past than at any time in the past 500 years.

I mean you can believe something all you want but the truth is there is zero evidence that humans are warming the planet by any meaningful level.

Further to discuss this issue and the massive PR behind it while leaving out Maruice Stong is like debating the moon landing and leaving Neal Armstrong out of it. It is just pointless. The ONLY reason people believe in man made warming is because the T.V., the Radio and the Internet say so and checking sources means nothing if the sources are funded by the UN with a predetermined outcome.

Mark as kind of a play on footprint and freedom as measure of independence/preparedness.

You could use a similar scoring system to what Galloway suggests above(Food, Transporation, Housing, and Miscellaneous) or one that incorporates the five tenents of survival: 1) Fire / Energy 2) Shelter 3) Water 4) Food 5) Security.

The max possible would be 100 which could be easily broken down into either of the two systems above with 20 or 25pts max in each category. One could create an online questionaire with questions asking their level of preparedness/independence/knowledge in each category and then a result could be calculated with specific recommendations on what areas they need to improve.